I recently spoke to the folks at Food Tracker and have learned a lot more about their solution. I think the mobile app and the use of QR codes offers tremendous potential for independent restaurants.

We are all living in a mobile world in which so many people love the power of information at their fingertips. Food Tracker is definitely a solution that independent restaurants should look as it offers a point of difference in the marketplace that they could exploit while benefiting their guests.

I recently read an article about a restaurant that was struggling to stay afloat with rising food costs and fuel surcharges with great interest. The title of the article caught my attention because I am acutely aware that both are factors that affect independent restaurants in a major way.

What struck me most about this article was that the primary story was about a restaurant that had been in business for over 25 years. After 25 years in business the owner was contemplating closing the restaurant because of rising costs and a sluggish economy. He went on to say that one night he only had (5) guests spending a grand total of $75 and in a subsequent night he had 40 guests. He lamented about the “boom and bust” and that the bills just keep coming and that he was facing an uncertain future. He also indicated that his food costs have risen over 20% in the last year.

In the article it was also stated that a recent post by “one of the most historic restaurants in…” was “alarming” The post was an interesting poem that essentially announced to anyone that wanted to read it that the restaurant would probably close soon.

After reading this story, I wanted to see if there was anything that I could do to help this restaurant. I found the restaurant on a Facebook personal page, not a Business Page. There was a Facebook Business Page that was neither claimed or updated. I googled the restaurant and found a website domain that was in Japanese, I found lots of business listings on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Urbanspoon reviews. I also found the restaurant’s Google Places which was unclaimed.

What I found most compelling was that although the restaurant had over 600 friends on their Facebook page and had basically announced that the restaurant was closing people were still posting to the page. People were still sending positive comments, posting pictures, and generally wishing the owner well. Equally as compelling were the reviews on the other sites. Many were absolutely negative and regrettably many of those were recent.

Increasing costs do have an adverse affect on restaurants, independents and chains. A sluggish economy also can impact a restaurant’s traffic, but not managing your online presence will virtually assure that generating new guests will not happen.

I am an optimist and I think that with some help this restaurant can regenerate itself. I have sent a message to the owner and offered some resources. Admittedly, I do not know the operating conditions, finances, or other factors affecting this restaurant but I believe that we can rekindle his relationship with the public.

Stay Tuned…

and while you are waiting, please review your online marketing. There are so many things that do not take a lot of time or a lot of money that you can do for your restaurant. If you would like some help just send me a message and I will send you some resource links.

Although there are no doubt endless quantities of books written on customer service, there are very view that are written to the customer touch point that matters most in the restaurant industry…the servers!

David Hayden has done a great job of providing an absolute guide that is not only an indispensable guide for servers but a way for restaurants to ultimately train and reinforce their waitstaff effectiveness. It is easy to see that David is speaking from many years of practical experience and not espousing theories that are not relevant to the restaurant business.

What is so critical about “Tips…” is that if everyone in the restaurant applied the techniques and principles in this book, not only will your actions produce simply delighted guests who are loyal to your business but you will have a happier waitstaff. Simply delighted guests love to tell their friends and in this age of “social word of mouth”, and because of the law of attraction the restaurant will attract the best servers.

“Tips..” is a cornerstone of what I like to call “Building Your Brand from the Inside Out” and a must have for any restaurant that has servers that can make or break your business. Ultimately, any good restaurant owner has already shared these processes with your staff but bringing in “Tips…” will help reinforce and insure that your servers are delivering the kind of service that you expect and most importantly the kind of service that will produce raving fans.

Quick link to buy the book

Disclosure: I am a restaurant guy who works for a food distributor. I share Winning Strategies, Processes, and Innovations for restaurants. “Tips…” is not only a winning strategy, it is a process that your staff can implement to make you and them more money. I am not compensated for this review, but hopeful that you (the restaurateur and your staff) will makes lots of money with this book.

Apple states in a television commercial that there are over 500,000 apps and growing! Everybody has a Smartphone! Mobile usage is up, people who own tablets essentially doubled in a month!

And here are some more stats:

According to Nielsen 28% of cell phone users in the US have smart phones
More than 80,000,000 new users are expected by the end of the year this year alone
41% of new phones sold in the past 4 months have been smart phones
More than half of all iPhone users are over 44 years old
According to .com there are 142.8 million smart phone users in the US

Source: Restaurant Smart Phone Apps In the interest of full disclosure, I am a fan of Mark Laux and HotOperator and it is Mark’s recent post on mobile apps that inspired me to write this post. HotOperator is an elite group that understands the restaurant business and most importantly the menu.

So every restaurant needs their own mobile app, right?

In my opinion, NO!

But let me explain, currently developers have been building mobile apps for everything that consumers touch and that’s understandable since consumers are flocking to the mobile devices. Most importantly, one of the largest groups flocking to mobile devices are people over 44. Over 44, are you kidding? Yep, over 44, the ones with the money. So for marketers and developers that is an incredible demographic. But what about all of those kids, aren’t they “app-happy” too? Of course they are and marketers and developers love them too.

Here’s where we are today, mobile apps are becoming ubiquitous for QSR’s (Quick Service Restaurants) and the younger demographic (app-happy) is very active with these. But what about Independent Restaurants? Well with over 180,000 independent restaurants in the US, the marketers and developers are aggressively pursuing them because after all if it works for chains it should work for independents. Many developers have gained backing from venture capitalists after successfully building apps for many chain restaurants. Now, they want to push the model out to independents.

So what’s the problem? In my opinion, many independent restaurants could benefit from mobile apps but only if their brand is buttoned-down.

How about your menu? Is it doing what it should do, is it profitable?

Are people talking positively about your brand in social spaces? Are you happy with your social profiles?

How well is your interaction with your brand in the social spaces? Are you the only one doing the talking?

Do you currently have pictures that you would be proud to share all over the internet?

Are your internal touch points customer friendly?

How about your online profile as it currently exists? Are you happy with it?

If you can answer yes to all of these questions and probably about a thousand more than you need to get a mobile app. My point is that unless you are 100% sure that you are ready for a mobile application don’t do it. Building an app that does not represent your brand well could have the unintended consequence of diminishing your brand and not enhancing it.

Mark Moreno

Here’s my bottomline for independent restaurants:

1. Build your Brand from the inside out 2. Never subordinate your brand with that of someone else 3. Never, Never, Ever Discount!

The Food Genius API (launching in November 2011) helps you find and share delicious dishes. From our massive database of more than 600,000 restaurants and 11,600,000 dishes, the Food Genius API suggests awesome dishes that your users will love.

What it boils down to is getting a restaurants accurate menu and information in the hands of consumers. OpenMenu provides the standard, the tools and the system to regulate menus. This means restaurants have a complete solution for getting their accurate menus in front of consumers.

Imagine adding specials to your menu in the morning and almost immediately your website is updated, mobile apps have the new specials, menu review websites have the new items to review and your Facebook menu is updated. This is what can be done with a regulated system like the one created by OpenMenu. No more updating a PDF menu, going to every restaurant based solutions and updating your menu there (how many places is this? 5, 10, 15 – probably more as its growing every month). One menu, in one location, driving your menu everywhere.

2. Can you tell us why you developed OpenMenu and what drove you to create it.

It all started with one simple question asked by my wife two and a half years ago; “Where do you want to go eat for your birthday?” The question was simple but the search was not. All I wanted that day was a piece of death-by-chocolate cake. So I started searching for a restaurant, looking at websites, loading menus. Loading menu after menu in formats that where large, clunky and often difficult to search through. PDFs, scanned-in images and Flash based. All things I consider user-unfriendly. There had to be a better way.

I thought about this idea for almost 2 years. I thought about how things should work, how the information should be structured and what the name of this idea should be. I could create a standard for the way restaurants store their menus. Then restaurants could store a version of their menu in the new standard or on their website. Then create a centralized location of all these restaurant menus. One menu, in one location, that could be distributed to every website and application that deals with restaurants and restaurant menus.

3. What is the benefit to the consumer and how are you currently measuring their responsiveness to OpenMenu?

The benefit to the consumer is access to accurate and updated menu/restaurant information. Once you have a restaurants complete information and detailed menu in a format that is standardized the skies the limit on what can be created. From menu item search engines to advanced mobile applications to better social websites and tools, with access to the menu information anything is possible. Long gone will be the days of stumbling across a menu on the internet only to find out its 6 months old and items are no longer being served.

Its hard for OpenMenu to measure responsiveness by the consumer since what we provide is for restaurants and the developers of the tools used by consumers. We work closely with companies who provide consumer based applications. The restaurant industry has responded in a very positive manor to what OpenMenu is doing.

Diningverse has worked closely with OpenMenu to assist us on tweaking our systems and standard to better meet the needs of companies providing restaurant based solutions. Based on our collaboration the newest version of Diningverse’s powerful online menu creator is fully compliant with the OpenMenu Format and they are working on even more powerful tools to interact with OpenMenu.

Diningverse is one of those companies that champion for the independent restaurant scene and working with them has been a pleasure.

The future is wide open for OpenMenu. We are currently in works with many companies to support the OpenMenu Format and provide tools and applications that interact with OpenMenu Format menus. Over the next year we plan on releasing updates to the OpenMenu Format, releasing a mobile OpenMenu Creator for editing your menus on the go, enhancing our users experience at OpenMenu.com and releasing an API into our database so developers can use our information. Watch us on Facebook and Twitter for updates and news.